Wednesday, 26 December 2012

final Christmas gifts

I've had to wait until after Christmas to show you these, because, although I'm pretty certain my sister in law doesn't read my blog, I'm positive my friend Justine does, and as these gifts were made for them, I didn't want to ruin the surprise.

My Melody Miller Bee pillow is all finished and wrapped and as I'm writing this (2 days before Christmas) it's under Justine's tree. She refused to open it when I gave it to her. Damn her.

Justine is an amazing friend and we get on brilliantly. Even our kids get on brilliantly. And Snoop doesn't hate her completely (only a little bit). So when I finished the cross stitch I knew I wanted to make her a pillow with it.

I framed the cross stitched fabric with some of Riley Blake's shaded cottons that Becca at Sew Me A Song sent me. Instead of making a regular block and then quilting, I simply quilted as I went, stitching and flipping the new strips as I stitched it onto the batting. Super easy, and it meant it was already quilted when I finished piecing - time saver too.

I used tangerine and teal on the pillow front and then 2 more colours on the envelope back (I didn't get a picture - how stupid was that of me? And now I can't remember which colours they were either....although I have a feeling it was flamingo and vintage green.) I already had the binding left over from a previous project, so it was nice to use that up.

Here's a close up of the bee stitchery....

I deliberately left a few patches unstitched, so it look a little like an old worn tapestry. It goes really well with the slightly battered look of the shaded cottons. I think Justine will love it, she loved it at every stage as I was making it, so unless she's sick of looking at it, she'll be happy.

Onto Christmas gift number 2.

I think Floressence is an amazing collection from Art Gallery Fabrics. It's so perfectly mis-matched and looks like a really beautiful stack of fabrics from all different collections. It kind of looks like you pulled these out of your stash and thought 'oh yeh - I'm going to put this huge over the top shabby chic rose print with this modern geometric, what of it?' And if you had done that, your friends would all laugh and tell you it was CRAZY. However, you didn't - the crazy peeps at Art Gallery did instead. It shouldn't work, but it really does. And in huge pieces like this quilt you can see the mis-matched nature perfectly.

Trudi quilted this for me and I could not be happier with how it turned out. She used a beautiful variegated pink thread and added just the right amount of quilting - not too much, not too little. It feels amazing. The binding is sketch in lipstick (available here in the UK). I had a pink solid picked out, but it looked to flat when the quilt was all done, so I tried out a few other fabrics and the sketch was perfect.

The weather is terrible here, and I can't get a decent picture at all. I'll keep trying, but I don't want to drag the poor quilt around the mud, because it's not mine.

I added a label (and had to sew it on pretty quick smart, because I was falling more and more in love with the quilt and was starting to think about keeping it)....

...and now it's off to my sister in law and brother in law, who live next door to us and have been amazing in what has been a not so great year for us. I don't think we could have gotten through it without them. Lots of tough stuff happened, and is still happening with a whole massive shift in our lives work wise, financially and every other which way. I don't ever tell them how much I appreciate them, we're not that kind of people - but they know it, and now they have a quilt to remind them of it. Actually, right now, as I'm writing this post, they have Ginge and have given him lunch and are taking him to the movies. We are blessed to have them.

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comments:

I saw a headline of an article someplace that said something like, "Why Satan loves Christmas", or something like that. I didn't read the article, but I can imagine what it said.

Christ, in the temptation in the wilderness, said that man is to live by every word of God. In the face of every temptation Satan through at Him, He countered by quoting Old Testament scripture.

Deuteronomy 12:29-32 is clear that we are not to immitate the way pagans worshipped their gods in the way that we worship the true God. The customs of Christmas are from pagan religious traditions and therefore we should not use these customs to worship the true God.

The worse part of Christmas and other man-made Christian holidays is that they are really Satan's substitute for the annual holy days and festivals God has ordained: Passover, the Days of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Last Great Day. Each of these is rich in meaning for Christians. Passover represents the sacrifice of Christ, Pentecost represents the gift of the Holy Spirit, Trumpets represents the second coming of Christ, yet to occur, to mention a few examples (if you want to know the meaning of the other days, look in Google for meaning of Pentecost or secret of Pentecost, something like that). God commands these days to be kept, yet we do not keep them. That is not exactly living by every word of God as Jesus Christ taught by word and example.

It is because we as a nation do not live by God's word, even most mainstream Christian churches, that God will will bring in a few years a punishment so great on us that about 90% of our people will die in starvation, disease, war, and other causes.

Oh Katy, you've outdone yourself again. Love them both, and isn't it the best thing to be able to give people a handmade gift that's had so much of you out into it, in order to tell them how much you love them? xxx

If you are so sure of your convictions why post anonymously?@Gingermonkey .....love both projects. Hope 2013 is a fantastic year for you and your sweet family. Reading you blog gives me so much pleasure and inspiration.

Following your lead, I am cross-stitching the butterfly AND now I know what I'll do with it when it's finished - a pillow! Thanks for the great inspiration - or would that be thanks for letting me copy you.Love the quilt - it looks so awesome quilted, I can just imagine how it feels with that Art Gallery fabric.

Both the cushion and quilt are fab, love the cross stitching with the gappy bits (bizarrely I was telling my mum about the cross stitching you were doing on this panel earlier, and I was convinced there were gaps in it already, spooky!) and the sketch looks great as a binding. Hope you have a fab 2013!